Saturday, 16 July 2011

Review: Leona Lewis : "Collide" What do you think?

Leona Lewis is back with new single Collide and depressingly, even after a few listens, its not sitting well with me.

With the lukewarm success of her last album, it looks like the team behind Leona have decided to push towards the club sound that is EVERYWHERE to ensure her new endeavour will recapture past glories. So I guess who better to turn to than producer Sandy Vee- who had a hand in producing the massive sellers that were Only Girl (In the World) and Fireworks- to deliver a hit.
However, the resulting track is nowhere near the pedigree of those songs and though the melody of the vocal, the lyrical content, and Leona's voice- which they need to lay off the autotune with- are strong, the production is where it all falls down.

The whole track sounds forced together with the vocal and the sample of an Avicci house tune- which sounds suspiciously A LOT like it's sampled/ripped-off a couple of bars from Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Perpetuum Mobile- being ill at ease with the rest of the music. The tempo,which isn't slow enough to be a ballad or quite fast enough to fit the club, makes the track feel clumsy. The build up is also flat and uninteresting, lacking the punch and support that Fireworks and Only Girl provided for their less than stellar vocalists.

Collide, as a whole, feels slap-dash, lazily constructed and ultimately missing the overall polish that a big hit needs. I'm all for Leona Lewis moving away from the ballads and spreading her musical wings, but she needs, and deserves, better material than that provided on Collide.

3 comments:

I don't like it either. Whilst she should be evolving as an artist, she's going about it the wrong way.Mariah Carey went from ballads to R&B, and Leona is going from ballads to Club Dance - I don't think it's really worked.

Jeez - SO much overproduction on her voice, they have destroyed all her unique vocal tone, now she sounds just like Katy Perry in parts of this song!!

If you played this record next to her gorgeous version of 'Run', you would never think it was the same singer.

Leona's market has always been women in 20s-30s I would say...explains why she gets played on Heart FM so much - they even played 'Happy' to death on their playlist. I'm not sure this song will get such good radio coverage, or if that demographic will like it - and once you alienate your fans, it's kinda hard to come back.

I despised the song originally, but as I keep listening it seems to be growing on me. Though this does not make it a good song it just means I love the power of Leonas voice enough to let this song slide. I expect a lot more from you Leona!